WB Comp I 121-140

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LESSON 121 • MAY 1

“Forgiveness is the key to happiness.”
Practice instructions
Purpose: To learn to give forgiveness and see that, when you do, you
receive forgiveness.
Morning/evening practice: Two times, for ten minutes.
• Identify someone to forgive. Think of someone you dislike or
despise or find irritable or want to avoid. The one that has
already come to your mind will do.
• Close your eyes and see him in your mind, and look at him a
while. Try to find some little spark of light in your picture of
him. You are looking for some loving or true quality in him, or
perhaps some kind thought or caring gesture of his—some
distant reflection of the light of God in him. Everything hinges
on this, so take your time. Once you find something, see it
symbolized as a tiny spark of light somewhere in your dark
picture of him. Then see this tiny spark slowly expand until it
completely covers your picture of him, replacing all the
darkness with light. In other words, see him only in light of this
one loving quality or act. See this as the only clue to who he
really is. If you succeed, he will seem to be a holy person,
without a single flaw, radiating light. You might even imagine
Great Rays shining out from him. Now look at this changed
picture a while. Appreciate how lovely and spotless it is.
• Now think of someone you consider a friend. Try to transfer the
light you saw around your “enemy” to this friend. This makes
the friend seem to be much more than a friend. He is revealed to
be your savior, with power to enlighten you with just one glance
of his holy eyes.
• Now let your savior offer you the light you gave to him. Then
let your former enemy unite with him, so that they both offer
you this light. Why wouldn’t they give this holy gift to you,
when you gave it to them, and revealed your holiness in the
process? See rays of forgiveness pouring off of them and onto
you, absolving you of your “sins,” causing you to radiate the
same Great Rays that they do. See yourself at one with them,
united in the holy light of forgiveness that you have given and
received. “Now have you been forgiven by yourself” (13:3).
Frequent reminders: Every hour—do not forget.
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Repeat, “Forgiveness is the key to happiness. I will awaken from
the dream that I am mortal, fallible and full of sin, and know I am
the perfect Son of God.” To understand these lines, it helps to insert
“through forgiveness” at the beginning of the second sentence.
Remember the old adage “To err is human, to forgive divine”?
Forgiveness is what proves to us that we are more than human, that
we are divine.
One more point: If you are really going to say these lines every
hour, you’ll need to either spend time memorizing them or have them
written down on a card.
Commentary
The longer I study the Course the more this lesson makes sense.
When I first read it, it seemed unlikely to me that forgiveness was the
key to happiness. I could see it being a key but not the key. As the
Course’s explanation of the root of our problems began to sink in,
however, I began to see that in one way or another, unforgiveness was
behind every problem. Then it began to make sense that forgiveness
would solve them all.
Look at the litany of ills that comprise this description of “the
unforgiving mind” (2:1–5:5):
• Fear
• A cramped, constricted mindset that offers no room for love to
grow and thrive
• Sadness, suffering, doubt, confusion, anger
• The pairs of conflicting fears; the one that speaks to me most
eloquently is “afraid of every sound, yet more afraid of
stillness” (3:1)
• The distortion of perception that results from unforgiveness,
making us unable to see mistakes as what they are, and
perceiving sins instead
• Babbling terror of our own projections (4:2)
I recognize myself, or at least memories of myself, in so many of
these phrases: “It wants to live, yet wishes it were dead. It wants
forgiveness, yet it sees no hope” (4:3–4). I’ve felt like that. These
paragraphs describe us all. I think that if someone does not recognize
themselves somewhere in here, they are not being honest with
themselves. And the most awful thought of all is this one: “It thinks it
cannot change” (5:3). Hasn’t that fear struck at your own heart at one
time or another? I know it has struck at mine.
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When we admit to ourselves that these descriptions fit us, that we
find ourselves in one or another of these states of mind, the very word
“forgiveness” sounds like an oasis in the Sahara. Cool, soothing and
refreshing. As we were told in Lesson 79, we have to recognize the
problem before we realize what the solution really is.
“Forgiveness is acquired. It is not inherent in the mind” (6:1–2).
This states a fundamental principle that explains much of the
methodology of the Course, and explains why some sort of transition
is necessary between where we think we are and where we already are
in truth. If we are already perfect, as God created us, why do we have
to learn anything at all? Because the solution to the problem of guilt is
forgiveness, and forgiveness was not part of our mind as God created
it. There was no need for it. Without a thought of sin the concept of
forgiveness is meaningless. Because we taught ourselves the idea of
sin, now we must be taught the antidote, forgiveness. Forgiveness has
to be acquired.
But the unforgiving mind cannot teach itself forgiveness. It
believes in the reality of sin, and with that as a basis, forgiveness is
impossible. Everything it perceives in the world proves that “all its
sins are real” (3:3). Caught in unforgiveness, we are convinced of the
correctness of our perception of things. We do not question it. From
that perspective there is no way our minds can even conceive of true
forgiveness. This is why we need the Holy Spirit: “a Teacher other
than yourself, Who represents the other Self in you” (6:3). There has
to be a “higher Power” Who represents a different frame of mind. The
source of our redemption has to be outside of the ego mindset, apart
from it, untainted by it. And so He is.
He teaches us to forgive, and through forgiveness, our mind is
returned to our Self, “Who can never sin” (6:5). Each person
“outside” of us, each representative of that unforgiving mind crowd,
“presents you with an opportunity to teach your own [mind] how to
forgive itself” (7:1). Our brothers and sisters, manifesting their egos,
full of the fear, pain, turmoil, and confusion of the world, snapping at
us in their terror, are our saviors. In forgiving them we forgive
ourselves in proxy. As we teach salvation we learn it. As we release
others from hell, we release ourselves. As we give, we receive.
This is what the Course is all about. As we practice today, let’s
realize that we are engaging in the central exercise of the Course; we
are learning “the key to happiness.” And let’s not think we already
know forgiveness; let us come with humility, ready to be taught by
One Who knows.
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“Forgiveness offers everything I want.”
Purpose: “To feel the peace forgiveness offers, and the joy the lifting
of the veil holds out to you” (11:2).
Morning/evening practice: Two times, for fifteen minutes.
Sink into the place in your mind where the gifts of forgiveness
abide. Try to experience the happiness, peace, and joy that forgiveness
offers you. Seek that place in you earnestly, and with gladness and
hope. This practice seems to be an example of Workbook meditation.
It seems very similar to the practice in the early 100s, where you
quieted your mind and tried to experience the happiness and joy that
God has placed deep within you. Based on past lessons, you probably
should begin by repeating the idea for the day, and then use that idea
from time to time to pull your mind back from wandering.
Remarks: Approach these practice periods filled with hope, because
you have reached a crucial turning point in your journey. After this,
the road will be much smoother and easier. Practice “earnestly and
gladly” (9:2), with confidence that today salvation can be yours.
Frequent reminders: Every fifteen minutes, for at least one minute.
Say, “Forgiveness offers everything I want. Today I have
accepted this as true. Today I have received the gifts of God.”
Remarks: These shorter practice periods are obviously extremely
important. Practicing at least a minute four times an hour is no small
feat for most of us. The purpose of these shorter practice periods is to
keep in our minds the gifts we accepted in the morning practice.
Those gifts will fade away unless we renew them throughout each
hour. I suggest repeating these lines as a genuine, heartfelt dedication
to accepting the truth of today’s idea. When repeating these lines you
may want to make them specific: “Forgiving [name] offers
everything I want [happiness, peace, safety]. Today [day of week] I
have accepted this as true. Today [date] I have received the gifts of
God.”
Commentary
There is a phrase near the end of this lesson that never fails to
stand out to me. It speaks of how forgiveness enables me to “see the
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changeless in the heart of change” (13:4). For me, this phrase has
become a whole other way to look at what forgiveness is.
Behind every appearance lies something that does not change.
Appearances change, and rapidly. This is true both physically and in
more subtle perceptions. But the spirit within us does not change,
having been created by the eternal. Forgiveness is a way of looking
past the appearances to the unchanging reality. It disregards the
temporary picture of the ego’s mistakes and sees the Son of God. As
Mother Teresa said of each one she helped, we see “Christ, in his
distressing disguises.”
Forgiveness lets the veil be lifted up that hides the face of
Christ from those who look with unforgiving eyes upon
the world. (3:1)
Forgiveness is giving up all the reasons we have built up for
withholding love. The veil of all our judgments is lifted, and we
behold something marvelous, something wonderful, something
indescribable. “What you will remember then can never be described”
(8:4). (So I won’t try!) When forgiveness has removed the blocks to
our awareness of love’s presence, we see love everywhere. Love is
unchanging and unchangeable. There is no wonder, then, that
forgiveness offers everything we want, bringing peace, happiness,
quietness, certainty, and “a sense of worth and beauty that transcends
the world” (1:4). When you see the changeless in the heart of change,
distress drains right out of your heart because there is no reason for it.
Why are our moods and feelings such a problem to us? Because
we identify with them, because as the moods and feelings change we
believe we have changed. The Course is teaching us to learn to
identify with something beyond change, with the Mind of Christ
within ourselves that never changes and never will. Here is a very
simple rule of thumb: What changes is not me. My Self is
“unchanged, unchanging and unchangeable” (W-pI.190.6:5).
This is starting to take better shape in my mind as I began to see
that forgiveness is simply to see the changeless in the heart of change.
It is to recognize that the only thing that needs to be changed is the
thought that it is possible to change the Mind of the Son of God. It is
to realize that all my ego “thoughts” have changed nothing, and all my
brother’s ego “thoughts” also change nothing. It is to realize that what
is changeable is not me; to cease to identify with that which changes,
and to cease to believe that my brother is my changing perceptions of
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him. Forgiveness means looking beyond what is changeable to that
which is changeless.
Our pain comes from identifying with the ephemeral. Our peace
comes from identifying with the eternal. Nothing that changes is
created by God. Nothing that changes is really me. What is
changeable is threatened by change, and “nothing real can be
threatened” (T-In.2:2). Therefore, nothing that changes is real.
All that changes is nothing but a passing landmark on the journey
to the eternal. It is nothing to be held on to. Think of a line of stones
by which you cross a creek; you do not cling to each stone as you
pass it. You appreciate its value in moving you toward the other side,
but you do not lament its passing. Your goal is the other side. That is
the only value of things in this world, things which include our own
bodies and the bodies of our loved ones as well as material things, or
even concepts in our thought system. Changing things are to be valued
only as stepping stones to that which is eternal, to be gently released
as we take the next step toward the changeless, which is always with
us, always the reality of our being, even as we appear to journey
towards it.
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“I thank my Father for His gifts to me.”
Purpose: The Workbook is assuming you have made some real
progress on your journey to God, with the result that your journey
will now be smoother because much of your resistance has subsided.
You are to devote today to giving thanks for these gains. You do not
realize their full extent. Only by giving thanks for them will you
appreciate how great they really are.
Morning/evening practice: Two times, for fifteen minutes.
You spend these fifteen minutes giving thanks to God and receiving
His thanks to you. What exactly are the things for which you give
thanks? I detect three classes of things. First, God’s gifts to you in
Heaven: His eternal Love for you; the fact that He created you
changeless, so that none of your mistakes can taint your Identity.
Second, His gifts to you on earth: that He has not abandoned you but
is always with you, speaking His saving Word to you; that he has
given you a special function in His plan. Third, the gains you have
made as a result of His gifts: the fact that the Holy Spirit is gradually
saving you from your ego.
You also spend time receiving God’s thanks to you. What exactly
is He thanking you for? He is thanking you for hearing His message,
applying it, and speaking it to others. He is thanking you for healing
others through your demonstration of greater sanity, health and
security. He, in other words, is thanking you for your application of
His truths, just as you are thanking Him for this same thing. Take
time to open your mind to the idea that God is not judging you, but
thanking you, wholeheartedly and with total sincerity, and that His
thanks to you and yours to Him join as one.
Remarks: God will take your gift of thanks to Him, multiply it
hundreds of thousands of times, and return it as His immeasurable
thanks to you. This multiplication of your gift will give it vastly
increased power to save you and the world. Each second that you give
will be returned to you in the form of years of progress, enabling you
to take eons off the world’s journey to God.
Frequent reminders: Every hour, for an unspecified time.
Repeat the idea and spend some time thanking God for all His gifts
to you.
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Commentary
Today’s lesson causes me to reflect on all my Father’s gifts to me,
personally. I think that is what it is intended to do for each of us, sort
of a day to count your blessings. So bear with me as I share some of
my personal reflections with you, and take it as inspiration to do the
same for yourself.
I think I’ve been on a spiritual journey most of my life, perhaps all
of it. I can remember certain incidents as a very young boy that
seemed to say my direction was already set, way back then. I wrote a
poem once for my babysitter; I think I was in second grade at the
time. I can still recall the words:
Thank Thee for the sun and fields,
Thank Thee for the bush and tree,
Thank Thee for the things we eat.
Thank Thee, Lord, Thank Thee.
I remember one Monday after school, when I was about ten,
gathering three of my friends around me on a street corner and trying
to explain to them why I was so impressed with the Sunday School
lesson I’d heard the day before. It was a lesson on Ecclesiastes 11:1,
“Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many
days.” I was so struck by the principle involved, that what you give
comes back to you, and that our wealth could be measured by how
much we give, rather than what we acquire. It is a message that I
heard again, very clearly, many years later in the Course.
I had a deep spiritual hunger and desire for God all through
childhood, although I veered off in other directions for some time,
getting into trouble for youthful pranks, even police trouble, and being
horribly embarrassed at being caught shoplifting by a store owner
who had offered me a summer job (which of course I did not get). I
had experiences of what I would now call a holy instant several times,
a sense of the nearness of God, and yet I couldn’t seem to find Him
most of the time.
At sixteen I had a “born again” experience, and I became, for the
next twenty-two years, a fundamentalist Christian, although never
firmly aligned with any religious denomination. Something kept me
breaking out of all the molds people tried to cast me into. I read the
mystics, I read the heretics, as well as the Bible. I didn’t want anyone
to draw me a map of the New Jerusalem; I wanted to walk its streets
for myself. I spent years in a typical Western religious pattern,
“fighting against sin” as Jesus calls it in the Course (T-18.VII.4:7). As
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he says in that sentence, “It is extremely difficult to reach Atonement”
that way!
All through those twenty-two years, I hungered for God. All
through those twenty-two years, I was miserable most of the time,
disgusted with myself. All through those twenty-two years, I
wondered if I would ever “make it.” Finally, at the end of those years,
I gave up. I laid aside my Bible and let it gather dust. I decided that
Christianity was, for me, a dead end. I despaired of ever “crossing
Jordan” and “entering the promised land.” I decided I was just going
to have to accept life as it was, and learn to live with it.
About six years went by. I was still seeking something, but no
longer seeking anything spiritual. Or so I told myself. My relationship
with God was in a holding pattern, and we weren’t talking. I read
psychology. I did the est training. I read Zen books and tried
meditating a bit. I studied Science of Mind. I also enjoyed the world
thoroughly, as I’d never allowed myself to do before, including some
great sex, and making more money than I’d ever had in my life. I
began to realize that the things which spoke to me in the psychology,
secular philosophies, and Eastern religious writings that I was
studying were all exactly the same things that had really spoken to me
in Christianity. There was a “perennial philosophy,” as Aldous Huxley
called it, that ran through everything, a central core of truths that
everyone who ever “made it,” regardless of their religious background
or lack of one, seemed to agree on. And the more I got clear about it,
the more I realized it was all stuff I’d always known somehow. Like
“cast your bread upon the waters.”
Then, in January 1985, I found A Course in Miracles. Ever since,
I’ve been reading and studying these books, and practicing as best I
can what they say. And as I look at my life today, I can see that
somewhere along the line my life underwent a major shift. I moved
from a gloomy certainty that I would never find real happiness to a
steady conviction that I have found it.
So as I read today’s lesson, a deep sense of gratitude washed over
me. As I read the first paragraph, I felt I could honestly say it applied
to me very well:
There is no thought of turning back, and no implacable
resistance to the truth. A bit of wavering remains, some
small objections and a little hesitance, but you can well
be grateful for your gains, which are far greater than you
realize. (W-pI.123.1:3–4)
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A few days ago (in 1995) a friend of ours, Allan Greene, passed
away at 51. He was a quadriplegic who moved to Sedona just over a
year ago to take part in the ACIM classes and support groups of the
Circle of Atonement. Our support group met in his home, since he
was almost completely immobile. He could move nothing but his head
and his shoulders, the latter just slightly. Within the last two years, a
leg and a hand had to be amputated. He used to say that he was giving
up his identification with his body piece by piece. Allan was a long-
time student of the Course, one of the very few I know who actually
knew the Course’s scribe, Helen Schucman. He argued with it for a
long time, but had settled in to a steady determination to realize all
that it taught. Under adversity far greater than most of us can
imagine, Allan maintained an amazing sense of humor and a joyful
determination to heal his mind, whatever happened to his body.
Miracles happened around him regularly; he took them as a matter of
course. Last month, when he was having his gall bladder removed, he
took no anesthesia because he had no feeling in his lower body at all,
but a nurse held a screen during the operation so he would not have to
watch himself being cut open. During the whole operation, Allan was
conversing with the nurse about A Course in Miracles!
Last night (May 2, 1995) we had a memorial meeting for Allan. A
very large number of people attended, and one after another shared
how Allan had touched their lives, including a half dozen or so of the
professional caretakers who had administered to him over the last
year. It became evident that Allan’s life had impacted scores and
scores of people. I am sure his gains were, as our lesson tells us, far
greater than he realized. I know Allan did not think of himself as
particularly advanced. He lamented almost to the end about what a
slow learner he was. He often argued with his caretakers, and had one
or two walk out on him in a rage. He had his doubts. But from the
evidence tonight in people whom he loved and people who loved him,
he had advanced much farther than he thought.
I hope that is true of me; I believe it is true of all of us. We cannot
know now, although I’m sure we shall at some point, all the positive
impacts we have had on those around us with things as little as a
smile, a small act of kindness, or a gentle, loving touch at the right
moment. Perhaps, as it often was with Allan, nothing more than our
laughter, or making someone else laugh. Last Thursday, when Allan
was in the hospital, we paused in our ACIM evening class and had a
few minutes of silence for him. The next day, the day before he died,
one of our students phoned him in the hospital and told him about our
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minutes of silence. Allan said, “It would have been more appropriate
if you’d had a few minutes of telling jokes.”
Let me then, today, take time to express my gratitude to God for
all His gifts to me. I thank Him for this Course, which has become my
certain way home. I thank Him for the relief from all those years of
quiet desperation. I thank Him that, when I wandered off, He never
deserted me. I am so grateful for His Spirit within me, my Guide and
Teacher, and for all the loving friends and companions on the journey
He has brought my way (especially, tonight, for Allan). I am so
grateful for all of you, and for the opportunity He has given me to
share with you all, and to receive from all of you. I thank Him that I
am beginning to remember my Self. I thank Him for the steadily
increasing assurance that I will find my way all the way home.
I thank my Father for His gifts to me!
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“Let me remember I am one with God.”
Purpose: To practice and experience the idea that you are one with
God, and to thereby lay hold of your own peace and also free the
world. Today is a turning point in the Workbook, your first half hour
practice time, and also your first longer practice in which you are
given no instructions and are left to fly on your own—a preview of
things to come. The practice is deepening—getting longer as well as
less structured.
Longer: One—whenever it seems best, for thirty minutes.
There are no specific words or guidelines for this meditation. You
are simply meant to devote the practice period to today’s idea, to
abiding in oneness with God, to trying to experience that oneness, and
to letting His Voice direct your practicing. Jesus is clearly trusting
that you have learned enough from the lessons thus far to spend this
quiet time profitably, without getting hopelessly lost in mind
wandering. You therefore should draw upon all the training you have
received up until now, and should also be open to the Holy Spirit’s
promptings during this time.
Encouragement to practice: Paragraphs 9-11 are there to provide
incentives to really do the practice and to appreciate how important it
is. They teach us to see this half hour as a mirror, surrounded by a
golden frame, set with thirty diamonds, one for each minute. During
this half hour we will look into this mirror and see our face
transfigured into holy the face of Christ—our true Self, Who is at one
with God. In this mirror, we will recognize ourselves as Who we
really are. Even if nothing of the kind seems to happen during this
time, we can be confident that sometime, “perhaps today, perhaps
tomorrow” (10:1, 11:1, 3), this experience will come to us as a result
of this half hour.
Frequent reminders: Hourly.
Repeat, “Let me remember I am one with God, at one with all my
brothers and my Self, in everlasting holiness and peace.” Doing so
will add yet more diamonds to the frame around the mirror in which
you see your true Self. I suggest either memorizing this sentence
(which is composed of three lines of iambic pentameter) or writing it
down on a note card. I also recommend that, while repeating it, you
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try to feel each kind of oneness individually—first oneness with God,
then oneness with your brothers, then oneness with your true Self.
Commentary
This lesson holds forth a very high view; it comes from an elevated
state of mind. Basically, in the first part of the lesson it seems to
assume we are enlightened already. And, of course, from the
perspective of this state of mind, we are. “Enlightenment is but a
recognition, not a change at all” (W-pI.188.1:4). If it is not a change,
then enlightenment must mean recognizing what is always so. This
lesson, then, is simply stating the truth about us, the truth that we
have been hiding from ourselves.
To pray, to give thanks for the truth as God sees it, the truth about
us as He sees us, can be a very profitable exercise. Try taking a
paragraph of this lesson (or the whole lesson) and turning it into
thanksgiving, verbalizing your thanks as you read. For example, from
the second paragraph, I might say:
Thank You for the holiness of our minds! Thank You
that everything I see reflects the holiness of my mind,
which is at one with You, and at one with itself. Thank
You for being my Companion as I walk this world; for
the privilege of leaving behind shining footprints that
point the way to truth for those who follow me.
This indeed is our calling; it is why we are here. Perhaps most of
the time we don’t remember our Identity in God. All the more reason
to set aside a day given to remembering, for reminding ourselves. We
could understand this lesson as a portrait of an advanced teacher of
God. Everywhere she walks, light is left behind to illuminate the way
for others. The teacher walks in constant awareness of God’s
Presence. She feels God within. God’s thoughts fill her mind, and she
perceives only the loving and the lovable. This teacher of God heals
people in the past, the present, and the future, at any distance.
Slip into that mindset for a while today, my heart. Be the Christ;
let all the obstacles to it that your mind throws up be brushed aside.
Practice awareness of oneness with God.
In the latter part of the lesson it is clear that the author hasn’t
flipped out and isn’t living in a dream world. He knows very well that
we might sit for our half hour and get up thinking that nothing
happened. He knows that, for most of us, what he is talking about is
so far from our conscious awareness that we might devote thirty
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minutes to trying to recognize it and not find a glimmer of it. He
doesn’t care. He doesn’t care because, from where he sits and how he
sees, he knows with total certainty that what he is saying about us is
the truth. And he tells us not to let it bother us:
You may not be ready to accept the gain today. Yet
sometime, somewhere, it will come to you, nor will you
fail to recognize it when it dawns with certainty upon
your mind. (9:2–3)
Even though we experience nothing, he tells us that “no time was
ever better spent” (10:3).
The practice for today of a single half hour given to remembering
oneness is unusual in the Workbook. The routine goes back to two
fifteen-minute periods, or three ten-minute periods, in the coming
days. But what is more significant, actually, is the lack of “rules [and]
special words to guide your meditation” (8:4). He’s leaving us on our
own today. If we have been doing the exercises all along, we should
have a pretty good idea of some of the “techniques” we might want to
use, and we can use any of them, or anything that comes to us.
Actually he isn’t leaving us “on our own”; he’s leaving us in the hands
of “God’s Voice,” our inner Guide. Ask how to spend this half hour of
meditation, and listen to what comes to you.
Abide with Him this half an hour. He will do the rest.
(8:6–7)
You can be sure someday, perhaps today, perhaps
tomorrow, you will understand and comprehend and see.
(11:3)
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“In quiet I receive God’s Word today.”
Purpose: To hear God speak to you, to receive His Word.
Longer: Three times (at times best suited to silence), for ten minutes.
Yesterday we were told that we needed no special instructions for
our longer practice period. In keeping with this, we are told today that
all we need is to still our minds. “You will need no rule but this” (9:2).
The lesson, however, does tell us a little more than this. We can
arrange its instructions into three steps.
1. Still your mind. Still your chaotic thoughts, meaningless
desires, and all your judgments.
2. Go to that deep, “quiet place within the mind where He abides
forever” (4:3), the throne of God within your mind, the quiet
center.
3. Wait and listen. Once you reach that place of stillness in your
mind, your task is over. You merely wait and listen, in
confidence that your Father will come to you and speak His
Word to you. Hearing this Word, of course, can take many
different forms, from hearing actual words to receiving ideas,
pictures, or just feelings.
During this time, you will need to frequently clear your mind of all
those petty thoughts and desires that try to intrude. For this purpose, I
suggest using today’s idea, or picking a phrase, such as “only be still
and listen” (9:3). As usual, begin the practice time with a slow
repeating of the idea.
Frequent reminders: Hourly, for a moment.
Repeat the idea. Realize that by doing so you are reminding
yourself of today’s special purpose—to receive God’s Word. Then
spend some time listening in stillness.
Commentary
All we are being asked to do today is to be quiet for ten minutes,
three times during the day and for a moment each hour. Just to be
quiet. “Only be quiet. You will need no rule but this” (9:1–2). “Only
be still and listen” (9:3). “His Voice awaits your silence, for His Word
can not be heard until your mind is quiet for a while, and meaningless
desires have been stilled” (6:2).
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Isn’t it amazing how much practice it takes to learn to be quiet? I
can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat down to meditate and be quiet
only to find myself, sometimes only a few minutes later, so distracted
by some passing thought that I open my eyes and start to get up to
“do something” before I’ve even realized what I’m doing. I plop back
down in my chair muttering “Good grief!” to myself at the
distractedness of my mind. Draw a deep breath, think to myself,
“Quiet, Allen. Quiet. Peace, be still.”
The difficulties I have with being quiet, rather than standing as an
insurmountable obstacle to me, have simply become indicators of how
much I need this practice. Clearly, the Course is teaching us that a
quiet mind is essential. “The memory of God comes to the quiet mind”
(T-23.I.1:1). We can’t hear His Voice until we are quiet for a while.
The Course describes the voice of the ego in various colorful
phrases: “senseless shrieks,” “raucous shrieks,” “loud discordant
shrieks,” “the senseless noise of sounds that have no meaning,”
“frantic, riotous thoughts,” “raucous screams and senseless ravings,”
“a loud, obscuring voice,” “a frantic rush of thoughts that made no
sense.”1
Our ego is a constant noise machine trying to cover up the Voice
for God; we need to learn to still our mind, to cease to pay attention to
the ego’s loudness. The ego is noise; the Spirit is quiet. There is merit,
then, simply in being quiet, even if nothing else seems to happen. Let
me, then, remember to take this time to be quiet, to be still, and to
listen.
1
. References for the above descriptions of the ego’s voice: T-25.V.3:5; W-
pI.49.4:3; P-2.VI.2:6; T-31.I.6:1; W-pI.49.4:4; T-21.V.1:6; T-27.VI.1:2; W-
pI.198.11:2.
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“All that I give is given to myself.”
Purpose: To understand the idea that giving is not loss, but receiving.
Longer: Two times, for fifteen minutes.
Today’s idea is so alien to our normal way of thinking that we need
inner help from the Holy Spirit to really understand it. It cannot be
done with the intellect alone. To seek this help, “close your eyes…and
seek sanctuary in the quiet place” (10:1) where you go in meditation.
Once you reach that place, “repeat today’s idea, and ask for help in
understanding what it really means” (10:2). Be willing to lay aside
your false belief that giving is loss, and to gain a whole new
understanding, in which you realize that giving is a gift to yourself.
See the Holy Spirit as present in your practice period, and be
prepared to repeat your request for true understanding until you
receive that understanding.
Remarks: If you “only catch a tiny glimpse” (8:5) of the idea, of the
real meaning of giving, it is a glorious day for you and for the world.
For this idea would make forgiveness no longer a strain, but
something you would be naturally compelled to give all the time, as a
way of giving to yourself.
Frequent reminders: As often as you can (do not forget for long), for
a moment.
Repeat, “All that I give is given to myself. The Help I need to
learn that this is true is with me now. And I will trust in Him.” Then
do a miniature version of the longer practice period: quiet your mind
and open it to the Holy Spirit, allowing Him to replace your false
beliefs about giving with the truth. Through these practice periods,
you can keep the sense alive all day long that your goal today is of
great importance.
Commentary
This is a lesson that clearly aims at thought reversal (1:1). It
begins with the presumption that we have false ideas about
forgiveness: “You do not understand forgiveness” (6:1). In the sixth
paragraph it explains that our false understanding of forgiveness is the
reason we cannot understand how forgiveness brings us peace, how it
is a means for our release, nor how forgiveness can restore our
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awareness of unity with our brothers. Our misunderstanding of
forgiveness is the reason that we may have had trouble really entering
in to Lessons 121 and 122, which told us that forgiveness is the key to
happiness and offers us everything we want.
The idea that “all that I give is given to myself” is crucial to
reversing our thought; understanding it would make forgiveness
effortless. Paragraph 2 goes through a list of “what you do believe, in
place of this idea” (2:1). So, let’s practice some thought reversal, and
reverse the meaning of this paragraph to see what is implied by this
key idea for the day.
If we understood that everything we give is given to ourselves, we
would realize that other people are not apart from us. Their behavior
does have bearing on our thoughts, and our behavior has bearing on
their thoughts. Our attitudes affect other people. Their appeals for
help are intimately related to our own. They cannot be seen as
“sinners” without affecting our perception of ourselves. We cannot
condemn their sin without condemning ourselves and losing our peace
of mind.
If we understood all this and believed it, forgiveness would happen
naturally. We would realize that judging someone as sinful causes our
own guilt and loss of peace, and we would not choose to do it. We
would realize that how we see the other person is how we see
ourselves, and we would not want to see ourselves that way. We
would learn very quickly to perceive that their ego actions are not sins
but calls for help, closely tied to our own calls for help, and we would
respond accordingly. We would know that our judgmental attitude has
an adverse effect on the behavior of others, and would choose to
change our attitude. We would adjust our thoughts so as to have a
beneficial effect on their behavior instead of a detrimental effect. We
would recognize that we are not separate and apart, but share in the
same struggle with fears and doubts, as well as sharing in the release
from those things.
Given all this, we could understand how forgiveness is the key to
happiness. We would see that if judging causes loss of peace, then
forgiveness could bring us to peace again. We would understand how
forgiveness restores our awareness of unity with one another. We
could see how forgiveness can release us from what seems to be a
problem with someone else.
The practice today is really a kind of thinking meditation. We are
asked to come to the Holy Spirit with today’s idea, “All that I give is
given to myself,” and to open ourselves to His help in learning that it
is true, “opening your mind to His correction and His love” (11:6). We
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are asking for help in understanding what today’s idea means (10:2),
and what forgiveness really means. We are reflecting on the ideas with
His assistance, asking for new insights, new understandings.
Our behavior, our attitudes, and our painful experiences in this
world are all evidence that we do need to have our thoughts corrected.
If we truly believed what today’s idea says, we would not be having
these painful experiences. We must have false ideas still lodged in our
minds, and we need to be healed. Perhaps we think we understand
what is being said, and no doubt there is a part of us that resonates
with them or we would not be studying these lessons. It is the other
part we are concerned about, the hidden warriors, the contrary beliefs
we have dissociated and even hidden from conscious awareness.
If we ask for help sincerely, help will be given (8:3). Today will
bring new understanding. Perhaps it will come in the form of new
insights as we meditate. Perhaps it will come in the laboratory of life,
as circumstances shock us into awareness of how we still believe one
or another of the ideas this lessons mentions in describing what we do
believe in place of today’s idea. But it will come.
The help I need to learn that this is true is with me now.
And I will trust in Him. (11:4–5)
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“There is no love but God’s.”
Purpose: This is an extremely significant lesson, for it asks you to
“take the largest single step this course requests in your advance
towards its established goal” (6:5). You take this step by releasing
your beliefs that limit love and opening your mind to God so that He
can teach you love’s true meaning.
This exercise is very similar to yesterday’s, in which you went to
the quiet center in your mind and asked God’s Voice to correct your
false beliefs about giving. Today, you do the same, only asking God to
correct your false beliefs about love.
Repeat the idea and then “open your mind and rest” (8:2). Now let
go of your beliefs—one after another—in the laws and limits of this
world, for all of them justify limited and changing love. Let go of your
beliefs in partial love, selective love, and changing love. As you give
up each such belief, God will replace it with “a spark of truth” (9:3),
an understanding of what love really means. Call to Him and ask Him
to illuminate your mind on the true meaning of love. That is the
essence of this practice period: to open your mind, let go of your
beliefs that limit love, and ask God to teach you the real meaning of
love, which is far greater and more sublime than your mind alone
could ever understand.
Remarks: Gladly give this time. It is the best use of time you could
ever make. For if you gain the tiniest glimpse of love’s real meaning,
you truly have taken a giant stride. You have gone forward in your
journey countless years and have brought freedom to everyone who
comes here.
Frequent reminders: Three times per hour, at least.
Think of someone you know and silently repeat to him these lines:
“I bless you, brother, with the Love of God, which I would share
with you. For I would learn the joyous lesson that there is no love
but God’s and yours and mine and everyone’s.” Like the longer
practice, this is a powerful technique for opening your mind to the
real meaning of love.
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Commentary
“Perhaps you think that different kinds of love are possible” (1:1).
To my mind there is no “perhaps” about it; we all think that there are
different kinds of love, varying from friend to family to children to
lover, from person to animal to thing. The lesson asserts that there is
only one Love—God’s Love. To think that love changes depending
upon its object, says the lesson, is to miss the meaning of love entirely
(2:1).
“It [love] never alters with a person or a circumstance” (1:6). To
us, this can seem to be a very intimidating description of love,
because what we call love does not fit this picture. Our “love” comes
and goes, waxes and wanes, varying with the person or the
circumstance like a thermometer to the temperature. Love, as
described in this lesson, is wholly unaffected by anything outside
itself. This is truly unconditional love.
I am uplifted today by the idea that, if this is God’s Love, and this
is the only love there is, then His Love for me never alters, and has
“no divergencies and no distinctions” (1:4). Nothing I do, or do not
do, modifies His Love for me in the slightest. God’s Love just is,
eternally, endlessly. It has no opposite (3:7). It is the glue that holds
everything together (3:8). It is the substance of the universe.
It can be comforting when we think of God’s Love for us being
like this. It can be intimidating, however, when we realize that we are
being asked to love one another in the same way. It seems beyond us,
and if we are judged on whether or not we match up to this love, it
would appear that we all “come short of the glory of God,” as the
Bible says in Romans 3:23. The lesson, however, meets this fear in us
head on, and meets it with an incredible assertion:
“No course whose purpose is to teach you to remember what you
really are could fail to emphasize that there can never be a difference
in what you really are and what love is” (4:1). In short sentences, this
is telling us: “Love is eternal, unconditional, and unalterable. You are
that love.” You know this love we’re talking about, that seems so
foreign to us, so beyond our capabilities? Well, this is what you really
are! It is the other image of yourself, incapable of such love, shifting
and changing with every circumstance, that is the lie. This love—this
is the truth, this is you. There is absolutely no difference between this
love and what we are!
What you are is what He is. There is no love but His,
and what He is, is everything there is. (4:3–4)
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We aren’t going to see this about ourselves by looking at the world
(6:1). It isn’t something that can be seen with the body’s eyes; yet it is
perfectly apparent to the eyes and ears that see and hear love (what is
called elsewhere the vision of Christ). That is the goal of today’s
lesson: to see that love in ourselves, to catch even “the faintest
glimmering of what love means” (7:1), to “understand the truth of
love” (9:4). This attempt to quiet our minds, to free our minds of all
the laws we think we must obey, all the limits we have placed on
ourselves, and all the changes we believe we have made in ourselves,
and to find our Self, Who is Love—this attempt is called “the largest
single step this course requests in your advance towards its
established goal” (6:5). If we succeed, we will “have advanced in
distance without measure and in time beyond the count of years to
your release” (7:1). This is no small thing! To be able, even in a very
small degree, to perceive ourselves as this love; to catch a hint of the
fact that love is everything there is, including ourselves. This is a
quantum leap indeed! To spend a little time for this purpose is worth
it. “There is no better use for time than this” (7:2).
As we begin to realize that love is all there is, that this love is
everything including ourselves, we will realize that it includes
everyone else as well. The only way love can be everything is if it
includes everyone! So we begin to see not only ourselves, but the
world, in a new way:
The world in infancy is newly born. (11:1)
Now are they all made free, along with us. Now are they
all our brothers in God’s Love. (11:3–4)
We cannot leave a part of us outside our love if we
would know our Self. (12:1)
And so, three times an hour, we are asked to remember a brother
or sister who is making this journey with us, and to mentally send
them this message, as I now send it to you:
I bless you, brother, with the Love of God,
Which I would share with you. For I would learn
The joyous lesson that there is no love
But God’s and yours and mine and everyone’s. (12:4–
5)
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“The world I see holds nothing that I want.”
Purpose: To let go of the value we have placed on the things of the
world, so that our mind is free to experience what is truly valuable—
our home in God.
Longer: Three times, for ten minutes.
This practice is one of unchaining our mind so that it can fly home
to God. We can see it as having two phases. In the first phase, we
withdraw the value we have placed upon the world. We withdraw all
the purposes we have given things in the world, the purpose of
satisfying our personal interests (as Lesson 25 said). This is likened to
taking the chains off our mind. Unchained, it will then be free to
spread its wings and fly inward to where it belongs, to its home in
God. The second phase of the practice period, then, is this process of
our mind flying to its home. It is a process of stilling and opening our
mind, and letting it be guided to its resting place in God. Throughout
this process, we will need to be letting go of our wandering thoughts,
which, of course, almost always relate to things we value in the world.
To pull our minds back from these thoughts we can repeat the idea for
the day.
Remarks: Every practice period will shift your whole perspective a
little—it will withdraw some of the value you have placed upon the
world.
Response to temptation: Whenever you feel yourself valuing
something in the world.
Realize that doing so will lay a chain upon your mind. Instead,
protect your mind by saying, with quiet certainty, “This will not
tempt me to delay myself. The world I see holds nothing that I
want.” If you really watch your mind, you will find no shortage of
subjects for practice. I also highly recommend taking some time to
memorize these two lines. If you are really going to use them
frequently, having them memorized is almost a requirement.
Commentary
The general thought of this lesson is similar to the first three of
Buddha’s Four Noble Truths: that life is suffering; that the cause of
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suffering is tanha, or desire for self at the expense of others; and that
the way out of suffering is through the relinquishment of such desires.
“Believe this thought, and you are saved from years of misery”
(1:2). The lesson is asking us to give up all attachment to things of
this world, to put an end to suffering by putting an end to craving
anything the world offers. It can seem to be a harsh lesson, and yet it
is eminently sensible: if you do not desire anything, you cannot be
disappointed.
The things of the world act as chains when we value them (2:1).
What is perhaps harder to grasp is that this is the purpose for which
we made them: they “will serve no other end but this. For everything
must serve the purpose you have given it, until you see a different
purpose there (2:1–2). When we assign to the things of the world a
purpose in time, usually some form of gratification or self-
aggrandizement, we chain ourselves to this world. Inevitably, since
everything in the world must have an end, this causes us untold pain.
All our mistaken valuing accomplishes is to tie us to the world and to
keep us from our final healing.
To the Holy Spirit, the only purpose of this world is the healing of
God’s Son (see T-24.VI.4:1). There is nothing in the world worth
striving for. “The only purpose worthy of your mind this world
contains is that you pass it by, without delaying to perceive some hope
where there is none” (2:3). This is similar to this statement in the
Text: “The Holy Spirit interprets time’s purpose as rendering the need
for time unnecessary” (T-13.IV.7:3). The Holy Spirit appropriates
time, the world, and everything in the world for the purpose of
salvation and the healing of our minds. To Him, nothing here has any
other purpose.
Therefore, the world itself holds nothing that we want. All of it is,
to borrow from the title of a book by Ram Dass, “grist for the mill.”
All of it becomes the means to an end—our awakening to life, our
return to God. There is nothing in the world that is an end in itself.
When the lesson advises us, “Let nothing that relates to body
thoughts delay your progress to salvation” (4:1), it is saying the same
thing in other words. “Body thoughts” refers to our mistaken
identification with our bodies. It is everything that stems from the idea
that “I am a body, and to benefit and protect myself I must make
taking care of my body a number one priority.” Our cravings for
bodily pleasure, bodily comfort, bodily protection, bodily longevity,
and bodily beauty all fall into the category of body thoughts. Making
such things our primary concern can only delay our progress.
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The lesson is asking us to practice mentally letting go of all
thoughts of values we have given to the world (5:1). We are asked to
“loosen it [the world] from all we wish it were” (5:3). That is a tall
order, isn’t it? We spend so much of our time wishing things were
different and trying to make them be that way. In fact, if we look at
our lives honestly, wishing something or someone were different and
trying to bring about that change is the activity that occupies most of
our lives.
For the purposes of this lesson, then, practice taking a few minutes
to let your mind rest from such activity: “Pause and be still a while,
and see how far you rise above the world, when you release your mind
from chains and let it seek the level where it finds itself at home”
(6:1). Your mind, the lesson tells us, “knows where it belongs” (6:3).
If you loosen the chains of your desires, it will “fly in sureness and in
joy to join its holy purpose” (6:4). Each time you practice such an
exercise for only ten minutes, “your whole perspective on the world
will shift by just a little” (7:3). Let your mind rest, then, from its
constant craving, and relax as its homing instinct takes over and
brings you to where you really belong.
Throughout the day, the lesson is asking us to notice when we
think we see some value in the world, and when we do, to mentally
correct the notion with these words:
This will not tempt me to delay myself. The world I see
holds nothing that I want. (8:3–4)
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“Beyond this world there is a world I want.”
Purpose: To have a day of grace in which you see the world you
really want. Through this you will realize that giving up the world you
do not want is a giving up of nothing in order to gain everything.
Longer: Three times—morning, evening and once in between—for
ten minutes.
Begin by repeating, “Beyond this world there is a world I want. I
choose to see that world instead of this, for here is nothing that I
really want.” Try to say these lines with feeling. They are trying to
inspire in you a real desire to exchange this world for the real world,
and a genuine choice resulting from that desire. Feel the desire. Make
the choice. Then close your eyes and watch and wait expectantly for
an experience of true vision, a glimpse of the real world. I see this
practice as very similar to Lesson 75. You might want to read
paragraphs 6-8 in that lesson. The main difference in this lesson is
that we are seeking an eyes-closed (rather than eyes-open) experience
of vision. We are seeking to see a light of meaning and holiness that
our eyes cannot see, only our mind. While you sit and watch and wait,
feel your desire to see a world of meaning that is totally harmless,
peaceful, benign, and loving, without a trace of pain or loss. You may
want to repeat the idea from time to time, to renew your focus and to
clear your mind of wandering thoughts.
Frequent reminders: Once per hour, for a moment.
Clear your mind and dwell on these lines: “The world I see holds
nothing that I want. Beyond this world there is a world I want.”
Make this repetition a confirmation of the choice you made in the
longer practice periods—to exchange this world for the real world.
Commentary
The Course is so down-to-earth sometimes! “You cannot stop with
the idea the world is worthless, for unless you see that there is
something else to hope for, you will only be depressed” (1:2). So true!
The statement that “the world is worthless” is pretty blunt; there can’t
be much debate about what it means. And I have to confess that even
after ten years of studying the Course and, over time, coming to agree
with its ideas, I still find that wording a little jarring. I can almost
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hear myself replying, “Uhhh…that isn’t exactly how I’d put it.”
Because there is still something in me that wants to find some value
here, something worthwhile, something worth preserving and striving
for.
The emphasis of the Course, however, isn’t on “giving up the
world, but on exchanging it for what is far more satisfying, filled with
joy, and capable of offering you peace” (1:3). Well, that’s not such a
bad deal, is it?
It begins to look especially good if we take a hard look at the
world we’re trying to hang on to—“merciless,…unstable, cruel,
unconcerned with you, quick to avenge and pitiless with hate” (2:3).
Events such as the 1995 bombing of a government building in
Oklahoma City, and the rabid rage against the bomber, are both
testimony to this. The bomber was thought to be “avenging” the
government’s actions against David Koresh in Waco, and then people
wanted vengeance on the bomber. The many wars motivated by racial,
religious, or ethnic differences are vengeance cycles that have been
going on for centuries. This is the way the world is. “No lasting love
is found, for none is here. This is the world of time, where all things
end” (2:5–6). That, perhaps, is the cruelest part of all about this
world. Even when you do find love, it can’t last forever.
So—wouldn’t you rather find a world where it is impossible to
lose anything? Where vengeance is meaningless? (3:1). “Is it a loss to
find all things you really want, and know they have no ending and
they will remain exactly as you want them throughout time?” (3:2).
It’s speaking here of what the Course calls “the real world,” and the
following sentence—“you go from there to where words fail entirely”
(3:3)—is talking about Heaven, a nonphysical existence in eternity.
What is it talking about when it speaks of “all things you really
want”? If they are things that have no ending and don’t change over
time, they can’t be anything physical; certainly not bodies. It is
speaking of Love Itself; it is speaking of our Self which is spirit, and
which we share with everyone. We are here to find the changeless in
the midst of the changeable, and to learn to value what is changeless
and to let go of what is changeable.
When we choose the changeless, and value the real world of spirit
instead of what changes and decays, it brings us very close to Heaven,
and prepares us for it. Loosing our grasp on the world makes the
transition to Heaven easy.
Holding on to the world brings loss. When you try to cling to the
perishable you doom yourself to suffering. As we saw in yesterday’s
commentary, Buddhism has long taught a similar lesson.
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Doing the practice exercises for today has a remarkable effect.
When I say, “The world I see holds nothing that I want. Beyond this
world there is a world I want” (9:4–5), I find myself noticing all the
attachments I still have to things in this world; I find myself noticing
that my conception of what it is beyond this world that I “really want”
is a bit vague. And so I bring that attachment and that unclarity to the
Holy Spirit, and ask that He help me in those areas. I know He will.
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“It is impossible to see two worlds.”
Purpose: To realize that you cannot have a little bit of this world and
still see the real world, that you must choose one or the other. To
make the choice for the real world by letting go of all value given this
world. This is another of the Workbook’s giant steps (see 9:2).
Longer: Six times, for five minutes.
Today’s practice is extremely similar to the last two days,
especially Lesson 128. Begin by repeating the opening lines: “It is
impossible to see two worlds. Let me accept the strength God offers
me and see no value in this world, that I may find my freedom and
deliverance.” You are asking for God’s strength to uphold you and
help you make a definitive choice of the real world over this world.
Try to really mean this request. Then close your eyes and spend some
time “emptying your hands of all the petty treasures of this world”
(8:3). Then reach out for an experience of true perception, the kind of
seeing which your eyes alone cannot see. Desire to see only the other
world, the world of love. During this time, “wait for God to help you”
(8:4). Trust that He will be there, helping you make the choice to
value only the real world. While you wait, you may want to repeat,
“Help me see only the real world.”
Response to temptation: Whenever you find yourself valuing
anything in the world.
Remember that by valuing a little part of hell you are really
choosing all of hell, and blocking out Heaven entirely. Say, “It is
impossible to see two worlds. I seek my freedom and deliverance,
and this [thing I feel attracted to] is not a part of what I want.” You
will need to watch your mind carefully all day, because today you are
watching not for disturbances and upsets, but attractions.
Commentary
Today’s lesson is extremely uncompromising. The first two
paragraphs are as clear a statement of the Course’s understanding of
perception as there is in all three volumes. What we value we want to
see, what we want to see determines our thinking, and what we see
simply reflects our thinking. “No one can fail to look upon what he
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believes he wants” (1:6). Or, as it is twice stated succinctly in the
Text, “Projection makes perception” (T-13.V.3:5; T-21.In.1:1).
On top of that, since we can’t hate and love simultaneously, we
can’t project totally opposite worlds simultaneously. We project the
world of fear or the world of love. And “the world you see is proof
you have already made a choice as all-embracing as its opposite”
(6:2). In other words, the world we see proves that our minds have
made an all-embracing choice for fear. “Fear has made everything you
think you see” (4:1).
As I said, this is very uncompromising. It does not allow for any
part of this world to be excluded from the category of “projection of
fear.” The world we see is
quite consistent from the point of view from which you
see it. It is all a piece because it stems from one emotion
[fear], and reflects its source in everything you see.
(6:4–5)
If we try to exclude part of it from this portrait, maintaining that
“surely this part is good,” we are trying to “accept a little part of hell
as real” (11:1). It guarantees that the whole picture will be “hell
indeed” (11:1).
On the other hand, the Course does not try to foster any rejection
of the world. It tells us that only the part of it we look upon with love
is real (see T-12.VI.3:2–3). Therefore we are urged to love all of it
equally, and thus “make the world real unto yourself” (T-12.VI.3:6).
Our attempts at salvaging “parts” of the world as real are mistaken in
that they separate and make certain parts special, more loveable than
the rest.
As we see it, through eyes of fear, this world is without any value
whatsoever. Let us accept God’s Strength and “see no value in the
world” (8:6). If we are willing to do this we will see another world,
with sight that “is not the kind of seeing that your eyes alone have
ever seen before” (9:4). “When you want only love you will see
nothing else” (T-12.VII.8:1).
To be a little more practical for a moment: I have found the final
words of this lesson to be an incredibly useful phrase in times of
distress of all kinds: “This is not a part of what I want” (11:5). If I see
only what I want to see, and I am seeing something distressing, let me
affirm my choice to change my mind: “I don’t want this any more.”
Although my application of it is still very inconsistent, I have seen this
simple affirmation make separateness in a relationship evaporate. I
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have seen it make a sense of poverty evaporate. I have seen it change
my body, and give it an energy I thought I had lost. I have watched it
reverse impending illnesses. I recommend it highly to you all.
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“No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth.”
Purpose: God made an ancient promise to you, and you did to Him,
that you would one day go beyond the door in your mind and find the
real world. Today that promise will be fulfilled.
Longer: Three times, for ten minutes.
The instructions in paragraphs 11-13 are so clear that I have
merely laid the sentences out on separate lines:
Begin with this:
I ask to see a different world, and think
a different kind of thought from those I made.
The world I seek I did not make alone,
the thoughts I want to think are not my own.
For several minutes watch your mind and see, although your eyes
are closed, the senseless world you think is real.
Review the thoughts as well which are compatible with such a
world, and which you think are true.
Then let them go, and sink below them to the holy place where
they can enter not.
There is a door beneath them in your mind, which you could not
completely lock to hide what lies beyond.
Seek for that door and find it.
But before you try to open it, remind yourself no one can fail who
seeks to reach the truth.
And it is this request you make today.
Nothing but this has any meaning now; no other goal is valued
now nor sought, nothing before this door you really want, and
only what lies past it do you seek.
Put out your hand, and see how easily the door swings open with
your one intent to go beyond it.
Angels light the way, so that all darkness vanishes,
and you are standing in a light so bright and clear that you can
understand all things you see.
A tiny moment of surprise, perhaps, will make you pause
before you realize the world you see before you in the light
reflects the truth you knew,
and did not quite forget in wandering away in dreams.
(W-pI.131.11:2-13:3)
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Shorter: Often.
Repeat the idea, while keeping in mind that today you will go
beyond the door and find the truth, and that today is therefore a day of
grace, a time for gladness and celebration. I highly recommend really
reminding yourself of this latter fact. It will change your mood during
the day if you remember.
Response to temptation: If you forget what a special day it is and fall
into depression or complaining.
Remind yourself of the true nature of this day by repeating,
“Today I seek and find all that I want. My single purpose offers it to
me. No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth.” How can you feel
dismal when you realize that you are finding all you ever wanted? I
recommend either writing down those lines on a card and keeping
them handy or, better yet, memorizing them.
Commentary
At times it seems to nearly everyone that the search for truth is one
that will never succeed. It seems that we seek, and seek, and seek
some more, and never arrive at certainty. Today’s lesson comes as a
welcome reassurance that the search for truth is the only search that
will inevitably succeed.
“Searching is inevitable here” (3:1). It’s the nature of the world,
the nature of the predicament we’ve put ourselves into. Searching is
why we came here, and so “you will surely do the thing you came for”
(3:2). If we’re going to search, then, we may as well search for
something worth finding: “a goal that lies beyond the world and every
worldly thought…an echo of a heritage forgot” (3:4). What we are
searching for is Heaven, “a heritage forgot.” What we are searching
for is the home we left behind and almost put out of our minds,
although to do so entirely is impossible. That’s why we are driven to
search. “Behind the search for every idol lies the yearning for
completion” (T-30.III.3:1).
What we are seeking for is what we are; that is why finding it is
inevitable. “No one can fail to want this goal and reach it in the end”
(4:3).
Sometimes it may seem as though truth has deserted you. I think
some experience of that is almost inescapable for all of us, a last-ditch
effort of the ego to dissuade us from the search when we are getting
too close. I know it has happened to me, and all I can tell you is,
“Hang in there.” Your search cannot fail, even though you may think
it has already failed. I know I came through that dark period of my
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life. I don’t know how I did because I didn’t seem to have anything to
do with it, which is part of what convinces me that my “coming out of
it” is real and lasting. I still dip into despair from time to time, but I
will never again live there. “No one can fail who seeks to reach the
truth.”
What we are looking for, and perhaps can find today, is something
that is beneath all the thoughts in our minds that are compatible with
this senseless world—“a door beneath them in your mind” (11:8). A
door in our minds! Past that door is “a light so bright and clear that
you can understand all things you see” (13:2). Today’s exercise is
wonderful for visualization, actually picturing that door, seeing
ourselves standing before it, and with one intent, pushing it open to
pass through, out of this world and into another, like the wardrobe
doorway into Narnia in C. S. Lewis’s fantasy books. These exercises
are like rehearsals, and as we repeat them, they grow more and more
real to us, engaging our minds and training them in a pattern that
leads to real discovery of the real door, within our minds, to Heaven.
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“I loose the world from all I thought it was.”
Purpose: “To free the world from all the idle thoughts we ever held
about it, and about all living things we see upon it…that we may be
free” (14:1, 5).
Begin by repeating, “I who remain as God created me would
loose the world from all I thought it was. For I am real because the
world is not, and I would know my own reality.” The rest of the
practice period sounds like Workbook meditation to me, in which we
place our minds in a state of rest, “alert but with no strain” (15:4).
Based on the lines we repeat, this exercise reminds me of a couple of
other lessons—128 and 188—in which we have a sense of
withdrawing our mind from its focus on the outer world and drawing
it inward to the quiet center, where we rest, where our thoughts are
transformed, and where we experience our true reality.
Remarks: You will sense your own release, but you may not realize
that your release will also free the world, bringing healing to many
brothers far and near.
Response to temptation: Whenever you believe that your thoughts
have no power to help the troubling situations we see around us.
When you notice such a thought, repeat, “I loose the world from
all I thought it was, and choose my own reality instead” (it will be
helpful to memorize it), realizing that by doing so you are unleashing
your mind’s power to free the world, and adding to the freedom you
gave in the longer practice period.
Commentary
To me, today, the point of this lesson is: I have the power to do
that. I can loose the world from all I thought it was, simply by
changing my own mind.
This lesson contains what is perhaps the most startling statement
in the Course:
There is no world! This is the central thought the course
attempts to teach. (6:2–3)
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The lesson admits that not everyone is ready to accept this idea,
although it makes it clear that all of us will, eventually, accept it.
(Such acceptance could take many lifetimes, I think, and doubtless we
have gone through many already to get wherever we are; this is my
own opinion, not necessarily that of the Course.)
In speaking of this in the analogy of a madman, the first paragraph
says that no madman can be “swayed by questioning his thoughts’
effects” (1:6). From the perspective of the Course, it is the world that
is the effect of our thoughts. So the approach that will lead us,
eventually, to understand that there is no world does not follow the
path of directly questioning the reality of the world. That is a fruitless
approach, as fruitless as trying to persuade a madman that his
hallucinations are not real. The approach that bears fruit is raising the
source to question—that is, in questioning the thoughts that produce
the hallucinations.
“Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world
must change accordingly” (5:2). As we begin to allow thoughts of
healing to flow through us, we open ourselves to learn the lesson.
“Their readiness will bring the lesson to them in some form which
they can understand and recognize” (7:2). The focus for us, then, is
not on denying the reality of the world, but on opening our minds to
bring healing to the world we see. Doing so will bring us experiences
that will convince us that the world is not as real as we supposed. We
may have a near-death experience. We may undergo some experience
of enlightenment that shows us an incontrovertible reality that
contradicts all that we have believed to be reality up until that time.
We may, in fact, experience something in doing today’s exercises that
will bring us our awakening.
The unreality of the world dawns upon us as we begin to grasp the
reality of our Self: “To know your Self is the salvation of the world”
(10:1). If we are as God created us, then what appears to change us
cannot exist, it cannot be real; there cannot be a place where we can
suffer, or time to bring change to us. The world is the effect of our
thoughts, and nothing more: “You maintain the world within your
mind in thought” (10:3). As we discover what we truly are by
allowing love to move through us in healing, we realize that “If you
are real the world you see is false, for God’s creation is unlike the
world in every way” (11:5). We release the world from what we
thought it was by accepting our oneness with God, and realizing that
the world, as we see it, cannot be real because it does not reflect this
truth: “What He creates is not apart from Him, and nowhere does the
Father end, the Son begin as something separate from Him” (12:4).
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To “loose the world” is to heal it. The meditation for today is one
in which we “send out these thoughts to bless the world” (16:1). “I
loose the world” means that I extend healing to all the world, I free it
from suffering, I absolve it from guilt, I heal it of sickness, I lift all
thoughts of vengeance from it. It is taking this role as savior to the
world that reveals our Self to us, and transforms our thoughts and, in
turn, the world that is their effect. This is “the power of your simple
change of mind” (17:1).
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“I will not value what is valueless.”
Purpose: To empty our hands of all the things we value in this world
and to reach the state of Heaven.
Repeat, “I will not value what is valueless, and only what has
value do I seek, for only that do I desire to find.” Then try to find the
valuable within yourself. Hold in mind an honest willingness to not
deceive yourself about what is valuable. Refuse to fool yourself into
thinking that the things of this world can bring you real, lasting
happiness. Try instead to value only the eternal, in your brothers and
in yourself. Empty your hands of the treasures of this world. Open
your mind and let go of its usual attachments. In this empty, open
state, come before the gate of Heaven within you, and it will swing
open, offering you the gift of everything.
Response to temptation: Whenever you feel burdened or feel
confronted with a difficult decision.
Immediately respond by repeating, “I will not value what is
valueless, for what is valuable belongs to me.” This will remind you
that no decision can be difficult, because you choose between the
infinitely valuable and the totally worthless.
Commentary
The laws that govern choice are two:
• There are only two alternatives: everything or nothing.
• There is no compromise; there is no in-between.
The criteria for judging what is worth desiring are:
• Will it last forever? (If not, it is nothing.)
• Is it a choice in which no one loses? (If not, you are left with
nothing.)
• Is the purpose free of the ego’s goals? (If not, there is
compromise.)
• Is the choice free of all guilt? (If not, the real alternatives have
been obscured.)
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These are stringent rules! They are clear, but not easily learned.
How can we know whether or not the ego's goals are intruding, for
instance? “Here it is easiest of all to be deceived” (8:5). The ego
masquerades in innocence. Yet the lesson asserts that the ego's
camouflage is only “a thin veneer, which could deceive but those who
are content to be deceived” (9:1). “Its goals are obvious to anyone
who cares to look for them” (9:2). We need only to be willing to look,
and the ego detector is quite simple: guilt. “If you feel any guilt about
your choice, you have allowed the ego’s goals to come between the
real alternatives” (11:2).
If I apply these criteria for choice to the decisions in my life, my
life will be constantly revolutionized. The first criterion alone rules
out absolutely every goal involving anything material, including
bodies and ordinary human relationships. Will it last forever? What
lasts forever in this world? Only love. And not all that we call love
lasts forever; we’ve all demonstrated that for ourselves, in all
likelihood, or seen it all around us. The assertion of the Course, by the
way, is that if it doesn’t last, it wasn’t love to begin with:
Where disillusionment is possible, there was not love but
hate. For hate is an illusion, and what can change was
never love. (T-16.IV.4:3–4)
But there is a love not of this world; a light we cannot find in the
world but which we can give to the world (see T-13.VI.11:1–2).
As Stephen Levine has written, we cannot own love, but we can be
owned by it. And that is what is being said here.
We may think that most of our choices are not so monumental as
all this. But they are all this very choice. In every moment we are
choosing to give ourselves to love, to be taken over by it and used by
it, or we are choosing to withhold ourselves from it, in fear. To choose
love is the only guiltless choice.
It isn’t complex. “Complexity is nothing but a screen of smoke,
which hides the very simple fact that no decision can be difficult”
(12:3). It is the decision: “Let me be love in this situation and nothing
else.” No, we don’t know how to do that. That is why we must come
“with empty hands and open minds” (13:1). Holding on to nothing,
unencumbered (14:1) by any lesser values. And with no
preconceptions about what being love means—open minds. In the
words of a poem by the Christian poetess Amy Carmichael:
Love through me, Love of God.
Make me like Thy clear air,
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Through which, unhindered, colors pass
As though it were not there.
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“Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.”
Purpose: To practice true forgiveness, that you may free your
brother, free yourself from the chains you’ve wrapped around you,
and lay down footsteps to light the way for those who follow you.
This exercise requires some explanation. First, “Would I condemn
myself for doing this?” does not mean “If I did this, would I condemn
myself?” Rather, it means “Do I really want to condemn myself for
doing this (because if I condemn him I will condemn myself)?” This
sort of “would you?” is found throughout the Course. For instance,
“Would you know the Will of God for you?” (T-8.V.5:1), which
means “Do you want to know the Will of God for you?”
• Ask the Holy Spirit, Who understands the meaning of
forgiveness, “Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.”
• Then choose a brother to forgive, under His direction.
• Now catalogue this person’s “sins,” one by one (but keep from
dwelling on any one of them). With each one, ask yourself,
“Would I condemn myself for doing this?”—because when you
condemn this brother for this specific “sin,” you hold yourself to
the same standard. You search your mind for a similar “sin” in
you, and then condemn yourself for it, just as you condemned
him. To really make this meaning go in, you may want to do an
expanded version of the question. Say, “Do I want to condemn
myself for [name the ‘sin’ you see in him; e.g., being overly
judgmental of others]? I will not lay this chain upon myself. I
will not condemn him for doing this.” As you name his
particular sin, make it general enough that it covers something
you tend to do.
• If you practice well, you will feel a burden lifting from you,
perhaps even from your chest, as if chains are being lifted from
your chest. Spend the remainder of the practice period feeling
liberated from the chains you tried to lay on your brother, but
laid instead on yourself.
Frequent reminders: In everything you do.
Remember, “No one is crucified alone, and yet no one can enter
Heaven by himself.” This means, when you crucify your brother, you
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crucify yourself as well. And when you set him free, you open the
gates of Heaven to both of you.
Response to temptation: Whenever you are tempted to attack
yourself by condemning another.
Say, “Let me perceive forgiveness as it is. Would I accuse myself
of doing this? I will not lay this chain upon myself.” This is
obviously a miniature version of the longer practice period.
Commentary
This lesson contains a very focused discussion about what it
means to “forgive.” It deserves not only careful practice as a
Workbook lesson, but careful study, as a separate exercise when you
have more time. Several of these longer Workbook lessons fall into
that category.
The main teaching of this lesson is that forgiveness, to be true,
must be fully justified. It applies only to what is false. Sin, if real,
cannot be forgiven (5:3–4). True forgiveness sees the nothingness of
sins. “It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, ‘My
brother, what you think is not the truth’” (7:5).
The lesson itself explains that main idea very well. I want to focus
instead on the results of forgiveness: the relief it brings to us.
Forgiveness is “a deep relief to those who offer it” (6:1). It wakens us
from our own dreams. Even if you don’t understand all the Course
theory behind forgiveness, when you forgive, when you let go of your
grievances against someone, you can experience the lifting of a
tremendous burden from your own heart. You may not understand
why that happens, but you can know that it is true. As the lesson puts
it: “You will begin to sense a lifting up, a lightening of weight across
your chest, a deep and certain feeling of relief” (16:3).
Forgiving is a very happy feeling. Why is that? Because, without
realizing it, when we condemn someone else for their sins we are
secretly condemning ourselves. By condemning another, I am saying,
“Sin is real and deserves to be punished.” If I subscribe to that
principle, then I must also believe that when I sin, I too deserve to be
punished. My form of “sin” may not be the one I condemn in my
brother; indeed, I may be accusing him, or her, of something I think I
would never do, and I imagine that because I am free from that
particular fault, somehow my condemnation of another will purchase
my salvation. But I have supported the principle that sin is real and
deserves punishment. Inevitably I know, deep within me, that I, too,
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have “sinned” in some way. And if I have, I have nothing to hope for
but punishment. What I apply to my brother applies to me as well.
When we are tempted to condemn someone, the lesson advises us
to ask ourselves, “Would I accuse myself of doing this?” (9:3) or
“Would I condemn myself for doing this?” (15:3). The words “would
I” are meant in the sense of “do I want to?” The question is not “If I
did what this person has done, would I judge myself for it?” Because,
if I am judging the other for it, I definitely would judge myself if I did
the same thing. We usually reserve our sternest judgment for things
we think we would never do, precisely because we would condemn
ourselves for doing them. When we read this question, for instance,
and think of a child molester, if we understand the question incorrectly
we may answer, “I certainly would condemn myself if I did that!”
What the question is really asking is, “Do I want to make sin real
and insist it must be punished? Because if I do, I am condemning
myself to punishment also.” We are laying chains of imprisonment on
ourselves when we lay them on anyone (17:5; 16:4).
This is why releasing my brother from his chains brings relief to
me. I am liberating myself from the principle that “sin is real and
must be punished” when I liberate this other. And what a relief it is!
The one who forgives, and offers escape to this other, now sees that
escape is possible for himself as well:
He does not have to fight to save himself. He does not
have to kill the dragons which he thought pursued him.
Nor need he erect the heavy walls of stone and iron doors
he thought would make him safe. He can remove the
ponderous and useless armor made to chain his mind to
fear and misery. His step is light, and as he lifts his foot
to stride ahead a star is left behind, to point the way to
those who follow him. (12:1–5)
Forgiveness is a deep relief.
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“If I defend myself I am attacked.”
Purpose: To lay aside your plans and learn your part in God’s plan;
to bring closer the time when your light, joined with the light of your
followers, will light up the world with joy. This is a crucial day in
your awakening; it is Eastertime in your salvation. This is another of
the Workbook’s giant strides (26:4).
• Repeat, “If I defend myself I am attacked. But in
defenselessness I will be strong, and I will learn what my
defenses hide.”
• Then rest from all planning and all thought. Your plans have
been walls that you erected to shut out the Holy Spirit’s plan for
your life. His plan is that you “become a light” (20:1) whose
“followers” (20:3) light up the world. So let go of your ideas
about your life and open your mind to His. Come without
defenses and listen as He reveals to you “the part for you within
the plan of God” (25:5). He may just tell you plans for today,
but those plans will be part of His larger plan for you. Do not
fear that these plans will ask sacrifice from you. They are the
way to your release. And everything you need to accomplish
them will be given you. Since this is an exercise in listening to
God’s Voice, remember the training you’ve received in listening
for guidance: wait in mental silence, wait in confidence, and
periodically repeat your request.
Response to temptation: Whenever you feel tempted to make your
own plans.
Repeat, “This is my Eastertime. And I would keep it holy. I will
not defend myself, because the Son of God needs no defense against
the truth of his reality.” This is long enough that you’ll probably need
to write it on a card if you’re going to use it.
Remarks: As you go through the day, try not to shape and organize it
according to what you see as your needs. Instead, if you listen to His
plans and follow them, you will find inconceivable happiness, and the
whole world will “celebrate your Eastertime with you” (26:4).
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Commentary
“If I defend myself I am attacked.” The general thought that heads
this lesson states that all forms of defense are actually witnesses to
attack, or to your belief in attack. If you see a need for a defense, you
must be perceiving an attack.
The self you think you are is something so weak it needs defense;
your true Self, which is mind or spirit, needs no defense. This lesson
shows that when you make plans whose purpose is to defend your
small “self” (the image you have made of yourself, comprised of your
ego and its expression, the body), you are indirectly attacking your
true Self, because you perceive that Self as attacking “you.”
The Course continually teaches us that “all attack is self-attack”
(T-10.II.5:1; line not in First Edition). It says we constantly attack
ourselves, but we are blind to the fact. We think the attack comes
from somewhere outside ourselves, and never realize that it stems
from our own thoughts of guilt. Over and over, the Course tells us to
look at what we are doing and thinking, to recognize the self-attack,
and to choose to let go of it.
Lesson 135 applies this general principle to a particular area of
our lives that we have probably not thought of as self-attack:
planning. First, it points out that all defenses are a form of self-attack
because they make the illusion of threat real, and then attempt to
handle “threats” as if they were real. It asks us to look closely at what
we think we are defending, how we defend it, and against what.
Second, it identifies our plans as a form of defense. Plans are a
form of defense against anticipated future threats. If that is so, the
reverse is true: All “defenses are the plans you undertake to make
against the truth” (17:1). In other words, defenses and plans are the
same thing. When you set up a defense, you are making plans. All
defenses are plans, and all self-initiated plans are defenses.
In sum, making plans is a form of defense, and all defenses are
attacks on myself. Therefore, making plans is just another form of
self-attack, to be noticed and abandoned.
Finally, the lesson discusses how “a healed mind” (11:1; 12:1)
approaches life: not making plans, but receiving plans from the Holy
Spirit, with full present trust in the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and
with confidence in His plan. Only this approach allows for change,
healing, and miracles to take place in the present moment.
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A healed mind does not plan. It carries out the plans
that it receives through listening to Wisdom that is not its
own. (11:1–2)
This does not mean that a healed mind does not follow a plan. It
follows a plan; it just doesn’t make the plan. It receives the plan
through the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
In simple language, the healed mind listens to the Holy Spirit and
does what He directs, instead of listening to the ego’s plans, which are
always based on fear and take a defensive posture. The ego’s plans
are always trying to protect and preserve the body; often, the plans of
the Holy Spirit seem to be unconcerned about the body at all. The
Holy Spirit has very different priorities.
When the Course is talking about “a healed mind” it is talking
about the goal of the Course—the state your mind will be in after you
graduate from the Course. This isn’t something you simply step into
after reading a few lessons; this is what you will be like after working
with the Course and completely integrating it into your life.1
1
. The thoughts expressed above have been taken almost directly from a
booklet I wrote, A Healed Mind Does Not Plan, published by Circle
Publishing. This is a booklet that deals entirely with the subject of
planning and decision making as taught in the Course.
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“Sickness is a defense against the truth.”
• Begin with this healing prayer: “Sickness is a defense against
the truth. I will accept the truth of what I am, and let my mind
be wholly healed today.” With this prayer, you are asking that
your mind no longer employ sickness to “prove” to you that you
are a body. Instead, you ask for the realization of who you
really are, which is spirit.
• After making this invitation, keep your mind silent and alert,
poised to receive the answer to your request. Open your mind
and let healing flash across it. Let all the purposes that you gave
the body be wiped clean, as the truth of who you are dawns
upon your clear and open mind.
Remarks: If you practiced well, your body will have no feeling. It will
feel neither ill nor well, neither good nor bad. It will have no power to
tell the mind how to feel. Only its usefulness will remain. Indeed, its
usefulness will increase, for it was the purposes you laid on it that
made it weak, vulnerable, and sickly. “As these are laid aside, the
strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful
purposes” (18:2). You must, however, protect this state with careful
watching, responding quickly to any thoughts which imply that you
are a body. For these thoughts make the mind sick, and it will then
attack the body with sickness.
Response to temptation: Whenever you have attack thoughts,
judgments, or make plans.
“Give instant remedy” (20:1) by saying, “I have forgotten what I
really am, for I mistook my body for myself. Sickness is a defense
against the truth. But I am not a body. And my mind cannot attack.
So I cannot be sick.” The last lines hearken back to a Text passage,
which says that there are two premises necessary for sickness to
occur: “that the body is for attack, and that you are a body” (T-
8.VIII.5:7). If you can truly accept that you are unable to attack, and
that you are not a body, then “sickness is inconceivable” (T-
8.VIII.5:8).
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Commentary
This is another of those lessons that will repay careful study; there
is a lot of good stuff in here!
The main thought is plainly stated: Sickness is a means we use to
defend ourselves against the truth. It is a decision we make, chosen
quite deliberately when truth gets too close for comfort, in order to
distract ourselves and root ourselves once again in the body. On the
bright side, then, when we get sick we can congratulate ourselves that
we must have been letting in the truth if the ego is getting this scared
of it!
For instance, in 1995 Robert and I gave a weekend intensive on
“We Are the Light of the World: Accepting Our Function.” During
that weekend I found myself being deeply impressed by the message
the Course was conveying to us all. The day after the intensive I got
diarrhea. Now, there is little that brings you down to a body level like
having to run to the toilet all the time! But I actually found myself
being amused by it. “How like my ego!” I thought. “What a
predictable reaction!” Instead of having the desired (by the ego) effect,
it had the opposite; it served to remind me of the truth instead of
distracting me from it. And guess what? It very quickly went away.
“Defenses that do not work at all are automatically discarded” (T-
12.I.9:8).
Most people react to being told that they choose sickness by flatly
denying it. This is not something that is easy to discover. The lesson
says our choice is “doubly shielded by oblivion” (5:2). We choose first
to hide the pesky truth that has been nibbling away at our delusions of
separation and of the physical nature of our identity by making
ourselves sick; that is the original decision we made. We then choose
to forget we did it; the first shield of oblivion. Finally, we forget that
we chose to forget, the second shield. All of this happens in a split
second (see 3:4; 4:2–5:1). In that split second we are conscious of
what we are doing, but the shields are up so quickly that the whole
process seems to be unconscious (3:3).
We need to remember what we have forgotten, the deliberate
forgetting of our choice. We can remember if we are willing “to
reconsider the decision which is doubly shielded” (5:2), that is, the
decision to run away from the truth, the decision that truth is
something against which we need to defend ourselves. This is why the
exercise for the day is:
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Sickness is a defense against the truth. I will accept the
truth of what I am, and let my mind be wholly healed
today. (15:6–7)
The antidote to the whole process is not attempting to heal the sick
body, but to accept the truth about myself, to let my mind be healed.
Sickness is a side effect of rejecting the truth about myself; the cure is
to accept the truth instead, to reconsider the original decision which,
although veiled from conscious awareness, must be there for sickness
to have occurred.
The lesson warns us, in the final paragraph: “Do not be confused
about what must be healed” (20:2). It isn’t the body that needs
healing; it is the mind. This agrees with the Text, which tells us:
When the ego tempts you to sickness do not ask the Holy
Spirit to heal the body, for this would merely be to accept
the ego’s belief that the body is the proper aim of healing.
Ask, rather, that the Holy Spirit teach you the right
perception of the body, for perception alone can be
distorted. (T-8.IX.1:5–6)
It is that original decision to reject the truth of what we are,
because it seems to threaten what we think we are, that must be
questioned and reversed.
The lesson says some rather incredible things about the body of a
person whose mind is healed, and whose body has been accepted as
nothing but a tool to be used to heal the world. The body’s strength
“will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. The body’s
health is fully guaranteed, because it is not limited by time, by
weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve
before” (18:2–3). If a body is not limited by time it does not age. Not
limited by weather means it needs no clothing or shelter. Not limited
by fatigue, it needs no sleep. Not limited by food or drink, it does not
need to eat. Who of us can say this is true of us?
Perhaps we have experienced a few glimmers of such brilliant
light, fatigue thrown off, lack of food overlooked for a time. But no
one I know is at this stage of perfect trust. We have a ways to go, you
and I. So I do not think we need be surprised when a cold attacks, or
the flu gets us down, or even if something “more serious” happens.
We’re still afraid of the truth—big surprise! Rather than thinking,
“Oh, why did I do this to myself? What is wrong with me that I am
still getting sick?” let me say, “Oops! I made a mistake. I forgot what
I really am and mistook my body for myself. Silly me! I just need to
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remember that I am not a body; this isn’t what I am.” The “sickness”
of the body can then become a catalyst for the healing of my mind,
instead of a defense against the truth.
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“When I am healed I am not healed alone.”
Purpose: To let your mind be healed, that you may send healing to the
world, aware that you and the world are healed as one.
Longer: Two—morning and evening, for ten minutes.
• Say, “When I am healed I am not healed alone. And I would
share my healing with the world, that sickness may be
banished from the mind of God’s one Son, Who is my only
Self.”
• Then rest in stillness. And as you rest, let the Word of God come
in to heal your insane thoughts, so that this healing can go forth
from you to the world. Once the healing comes into your mind,
you may try to muster a general feeling of giving it out to
everyone, or you may pick particular people to send it to. You
may even feel that certain individuals are being placed in your
mind to send healing to, perhaps even total strangers.
Remarks: This exercise will prepare you for the hourly practice.
Shorter: Every hour on the hour, for one minute.
Remember your purpose today by repeating, “When I am healed I
am not healed alone. And I would bless my brothers, for I would be
healed with them, as they are healed with me.”
Remarks: Is it not worth a minute to receive the gift of everything?
Commentary
Although this lesson has a great deal to say about healing in
general, its primary message is that healing, which is our function in
the world, is essentially a phenomenon that is shared, and that to heal
is to share. Healing restores oneness. “Those who are healed become
the instruments of healing” (11:1).
“Sickness is a retreat from others, and a shutting off of joining”
(1:3). It is isolation (2:1). Healing reverses that; it is a move toward
others, a joining, and a union. The healing being spoken of in this
lesson is a healing of the mind, and not necessarily of the body. “Our
function is to let our minds be healed, that we may carry healing to
the world, exchanging…separation for the peace of God” (13:1).
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Whatever the state of my body, it cannot interfere with this
function. My body cannot restrain or limit my mind. “Minds that were
walled off within a body [become] free to join with other minds, to be
forever strong” (8:6). My task today, and every day, is to allow my
mind to be healed, and to allow healing to flow through my mind to
other minds, carrying healing to the world. That can occur whatever
state my body is in. I do not normally realize how powerful my mind
is, and how extensive the effects of its healing can be. “And as you let
yourself be healed, you see all those around you, or who cross your
mind, or whom you touch or those who seem to have no contact with
you, healed along with you” (10:1).
As I open my mind to healing today, I realize that whatever the
state of my body, “what is opposed to God does not exist” (11:3).
When I refuse to accept sickness as my reality, my mind “becomes a
haven where the weary can remain to rest” (11:3). Sickness is just a
special case of “I am my body.” So what we are called on to do is not
just to refuse the limitations of sickness, but to refuse the limits of the
body altogether. Today, I choose to let “thoughts of healing…go forth
from what is healed to what must yet be healed” (12:6). I set aside
some time, ten minutes in the morning and evening, and a minute
every hour, to give my mind over to its function of sharing healing
thoughts with the world. “Reach out to all your brothers, and touch
them with the touch of Christ” (T-13.VI.8:2).
Today, I want to let healing be through me (15:1). I want to be a
channel, a channel of blessing to the world. What other purpose could
bring me such joy?
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“Heaven is the decision I must make.”
Purpose: To make the choice for Heaven, “the choice that time was
made to help us make” (7:1).
Longer: Two—the first and last moments of your day, for five
minutes.
Use these five minutes to make a firm, definitive choice for
Heaven. Begin by saying, “Heaven is the decision I must make. I
make it now, and will not change my mind, because it is the only
thing I want.” Then spend the rest of the time bringing your mind to a
place where you truly mean these words. This will probably involve
bringing to light unconscious beliefs that life is a terrifying exercise in
which all hope is finally swallowed up in death, and in which death is,
sadly, the only escape from conflict. Bring this belief system to light
and call on Heaven’s help, and you will see that this view is totally
invalid, “nothing but an appearance of the truth” (11:2). Then set this
hellish view of life, divested of all reality, next to the alternative:
Heaven. If you do, you will see that choosing Heaven is so obvious
and natural that it is no choice at all.
Shorter: Hourly, for a brief quiet time.
Consciously reaffirm the choice you made in the morning by
saying, “Heaven is the decision I must make. I make it now, and will
not change my mind, because it is the only thing I want.” There is a
real emphatic note in these lines, so you might want to emphasize
“must” and “now” and “will not.”
Remarks: Devote the evening practice to reaffirming the choice you
made at the beginning of the day and reinforced every hour of the day.
By ending in this way, you make the entire day about the choice for
Heaven.
Commentary
The lesson makes some stark contrasts between this world and
creation. One is a realm of duality, in which “opposition is part of
being ‘real’” (2:2). The other is a realm of unity, of perfect oneness:
“Creation knows no opposite” (2:1). This is a classic discussion about
what can be called duality and nonduality.
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Nonduality, or oneness, is what is real. Where there is only
oneness there can be no choice, because there is nothing between
which to choose. If oneness is reality, then choice, any choice, is an
illusion and nothing more. Choice is impossible, inconceivable. That
is the reality.
Within our dream, however, choice is not only possible; it is
inevitable, it is life. Within this world, truth cannot enter because it
would be met only with fear; the choicelessness of oneness seems the
ultimate threat to a mind that thinks duality is all there is. Therefore,
in this world, we are learning to make one, final choice. It is a choice
to end all choices, the choice between illusion and reality. Time exists
for nothing but this choice, to “give us time” to make it. We are being
asked to choose Heaven instead of hell.
Years ago, before I encountered the Course, I had been through a
lot of things, read a lot of books, and attended a lot of seminars. I sat
down one day to try to distill, in writing, what I had learned from life.
I was writing for my sons, then in their teens. I recall quite clearly that
at that point in my life, I felt I was only sure of two things:
One, you can trust the Universe.
Two, happiness is a decision I make.
I won’t bother to comment on the first item here, but the second is
something very fundamental to the Course, the realization that nothing
outside my mind makes me happy or unhappy; my happiness is
entirely the result of my own choice.
When I first read this lesson in the Workbook I was stunned by the
similarity of the concept, even the very words. “Heaven is the decision
I must make.” Perhaps the fact that I had arrived at this conclusion on
my own was one of the reasons I took so rapidly to the Course; it
confirmed what, to me, was the essence of my own personal wisdom,
words that as far as I knew were entirely my own. Here was this
book, saying the same thing. In saying that we must choose Heaven,
and that this is “the decision” we have to make, the Course is saying
that learning this is what life is all about. It is “the choice that time
was made to help us make” (7:1). It is a choice, a decision, that
accepts the total responsibility of the mind for the way it perceives
reality.
But the lesson is saying far more than this. The discussion of
duality and nonduality in this lesson explains clearly why so many of
us, indeed most of us, experience such tearing, inner conflict over
accepting the simple truth. We have become convinced that opposites
and conflict are not simply part of life, they are life. They are reality
to us. “Life is seen as conflict” (7:4). This belief shows up, for
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instance, in the somewhat frivolous objection that Heaven, where
nothing changes and there are no opposites, sounds boring. We are
addicted to the drama, devoted to the delicious agony of indecision. To
be without choices, to us, seems like death. To finally and completely
resolve the conflict appears to us like the end of life itself.
Yet that is what the Course promises and asks of us: the end of all
conflict. When this truly dawns on our minds, we often recoil in
mortal terror.
These mad beliefs can gain unconscious hold of great
intensity and grip the mind with terror and anxiety so
strong that it will not relinquish its ideas about its own
protection. It must be saved from salvation. (8:1–2)
It is unconscious; we do not realize what is going on. But we
literally run away from the truth, and shrink from total love, not
knowing what we are doing. Virtually everyone who works with the
Course over any length of time experiences something like this in their
life. It seems as though we are being asked to die. And in a sense, we
are: die to life as we have known it.
The only way out is through. Through fear to love. “Heaven is
chosen consciously” (9:1). For a decision to be conscious, both
alternatives must be seen clearly. We have to see hell in the plain light
of day, as well as Heaven. Our fear of hell, our terror of destruction,
our agony of guilt must be “raised to understanding, to be judged
again, this time with Heaven’s help” (9:3). It was our own mind’s
desire for an alternative to Heaven that made hell, and we must
understand that duality is a beast of our own making—and that our
desire had no real effect.
“Who can decide between the clearly seen and the unrecognized?
Yet who can fail to make a choice between alternatives when only one
is seen as valuable; the other as a wholly worthless thing, a but
imagined source of guilt and pain?” (10:2–3). Our making of duality
has seemed like such a monstrous thing; buried in our unconscious, it
was “made enormous, vengeful, pitiless with hate” (11:4), but when it
is brought into conscious awareness, “now it is recognized as but a
foolish, trivial mistake” (11:5). Our guilt over it is all that holds it in
place. When we look at it again, “this time with Heaven’s help,” the
choice to let it go becomes the only possible decision we can make.
And in that decision, we are released.
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“I will accept Atonement for myself.”
Purpose: “To accept the truth about yourself, and go your way
rejoicing in the endless Love of God” (10:2).
Longer: Two times—morning and evening—for five minutes.
• Begin by reviewing your mission: “I will accept Atonement for
myself. For I remain as God created me.”
• Then go into a meditation aimed at reconnecting with the
knowledge of who you are. You haven’t lost this knowledge. It is
still there, deep within your memory. You may want to picture
this knowledge as a light at the very center of your mind, and
then focus on sinking down and inward to make contact with it.
Increase your motivation to reach this knowledge by realizing
that you can remember it for everyone (11:5). Whenever your
mind wanders off, be sure to call it back by repeating the
opening lines.
Shorter: Hourly, for several minutes.
Do a shorter version of the longer practice (begin by repeating, “I
will accept Atonement for myself. For I remain as God created me”).
Lay aside all distracting thoughts. Let all false beliefs about yourself
be cleared away, and learn that the chains that would hide your Self
from your awareness are nothing but fragile cobwebs.
Commentary
What does it mean to accept the Atonement for myself? This
lesson puts an end to any idea that this is a selfish notion, or that it
means my only concern is myself, or my personal happiness. Nothing
could be clearer than this: “It is more than just our happiness alone
we came to gain. What we accept as what we are proclaims what
everyone must be, along with us” (9:4–5).
To accept the Atonement for myself means to accept the truth of
what I am, to decide to “accept ourselves as God created us” (1:2).
And what am I? I already know, in my heart of hearts, but I resist
knowing. This lesson is magnificent in its trenchant dissection of the
insanity of the way we question our Identity. It questions all our
questioning. It raises all our doubts to doubt. It denies the possibility
of denial. It belittles our thoughts of littleness. How can we be
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anything except what we are? How can we not know what we are?
“The only thing that can be surely known by any living thing is what
it is” (2:3).
God created us as extensions of His Love. That is our mission; it
is what we are. To accept the Atonement is to accept this truth about
ourselves. To accept the Atonement is to begin to function as God’s
Love in the world.
Every time we refuse to see the magnificence in another we are
denying our own. We look on others with less than love because we
refuse to see how much we merit it. We are God’s representatives on
earth; accepting the Atonement is to accept our mission. We are here
to restore the grandeur of what we all are to every mind—not just to
our own. This grandness, this magnificent inclusiveness, this divine
generosity is our very being. We are the open heart that embraces the
world, remembering “how much a part of us is every mind” (11:6).
In us our Father’s Love can contain them all. Our heart is big
enough for all the world.
This is Who we are. Today, let me remember. Today, let me accept
my holy aim. Today, let me know myself as part of this great
throbbing, all-embracing Heart of God.
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“Only salvation can be said to cure.”
Purpose: To seek healing for the mind, not the body, by hearing the
Voice of healing, which God placed inside you, so close that you
cannot lose it.
Longer: Two times—at beginning and end of day—for five minutes.
• Let all your interfering thoughts be laid aside as one, for there
are all equally meaningless.
• With empty hands, lifted heart and listening mind, pray, “Only
salvation can be said to cure. Speak to us, Father, that we may
be healed.” You are asking that the Voice of healing speak to
you, to heal your mind, the source of all sickness.
• Then, in the silence of all thought, listen for God’s Voice, Which
will cure all ills, regardless of their size or shape. Feel His
salvation blanket you with protection and deep peace, allowing
no illusion to disturb your holy mind.
Remarks: You will succeed to the degree you realize there are no
meaningful distinction among illusions. They are all unreal. That is
why they can be cured.
Shorter: As the hour strikes, for a minute.
Do a short version of the longer practice period. Say, “Only
salvation can be said to cure. Speak to us, Father, that we may be
healed.” Then listen in joyous silence, and hear God’s answer.
Commentary
The “cure” that the Course is talking about is a healing of the
mind, not of the body.
The body needs no healing. But the mind that thinks it
is a body is sick indeed! (T-25.In.3:1–2)
The lesson is the mind was sick that thought the body
could be sick. (T-28.II.11:7)
To seek a cure in the physical realm, by any means (even New Age
means) is what the Course would call “magic.” (Calling it “magic”
doesn’t mean we can’t use it if our fear level requires it; the Course
advocates a compromise approach in such circumstances. See T-
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2.IV.4–5 and 2.V.2, which I discuss a bit later.) The Atonement heals
the mind that thinks the body can be sick. “This is no magic” (6:4).
This lesson applies to bodily sickness, but it applies equally to any
apparent “problem” in this material world: financial lack, loneliness,
and so on. These problems all occur within the dream, and finding “a
magic formula” within the dream is never the solution (2:2). We are
“curing” the symptom and not the disease. The root of the problem is
within the mind. “Let us not try today to seek to cure what cannot
suffer sickness” (7:1). Our problems are not physical in nature. “We
will not be misled today by what appears to us as sick” (9:1). “So do
we lay aside our amulets [crystals? religious medallions?], our charms
and medicines, our chants and bits of magic in whatever form they
take” (10:1).
Early in the Text, Jesus makes it clear that magic is not evil. It just
doesn’t really work. It is only a stop-gap, an attempt to rid ourselves
of symptoms without really curing the disease. Yet sometimes that is
the best we can do. We have a headache, and with a splitting headache
it is often difficult to quiet the mind and peacefully meditate ourselves
well. So we use magic. We take the aspirin; there is no shame in this.
Only let us not deceive ourselves that we have really done anything to
cure the disease; we have simply masked the symptom. “If you are
afraid to use the mind to heal, you should not attempt to do so” (T-
2.V.2:2). If our fear level is high, a “compromise approach” may be
necessary (T-2.IV.4:4–7).
“Only salvation can be said to cure.” The magic of this world can
mask symptoms but not cure. “The mind that brings illusions to the
truth is really changed. There is no change but this” (7:4–5). Today
we are asked to practice just this: bringing our illusions to the truth,
allowing our guilt to be removed from our minds. This cures, and
nothing else. “There is no place where He [God] is not” (5:5), and this
includes our minds. Sin would keep Him out, but since He is
everywhere, sin cannot be anywhere (see 5:1–7); sin cannot be in our
minds. “This is the thought that cures” (6:1). Sin, and therefore
sickness, cannot be real because God is in us; He has not left us, and
what we think is sin cannot be so. In our awareness of His presence,
guilt disappears, and with it, the cause of sickness.

WB Comp I 121-140

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LESSON 121 • MAY 1

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